PC Unofficial A17 Feedback Survey

[DatDamnDutchie]

To be fair, I like the idea behind Empyrion, but I never understood the mechanics it uses. I guess your post partially explains why. Many people with different opinions trying to pull it more towards their own vision will simply tear it all apart in the end, if the developers wanted to make everyone happy. That's simply impossible, but what they could do is to try their best to find some sweet spot between all those visions, find some nice balance, take the best of all worlds so to speak and come up with the most intuitive and best possible result of that mixture, but never overdo things to the point that they no longer make sense.

Well thats basicly what they did over there. I visit many game forums and the EMp one is one of the happiest gaming communities I know.

But enough about that, this is 7 days. I just wish they would have done such surveys in the past, now we got a fallout voxel clone and no more awesome RWG or mining.

 

[mr.devolver]

Well thats basicly what they did over there. I visit many game forums and the EMp one is one of the happiest gaming communities I know.
But enough about that, this is 7 days. I just wish they would have done such surveys in the past, now we got a fallout voxel clone and no more awesome RWG or mining.

They actually did such surveys in the past for much smaller changes they wanted to implement and everyone was happy about the result, players picked the best solutions offered by the developers in the poll and both the players and developers were happy in the end, I don't know why they didn't do the same when they wanted to do such big changes for Alpha 17. The only explanation is that they were confident that the changes will be seen mostly positively. Apparently the unofficial poll so far shows that the changes are a mixed bag.

 

[icehot]

I really love A17 in general, it's really good. The only things I want to change really are:-

1. Bringing back the wood log spikes, just make them so they can't be rotated and only placed on the ground or something

2. I would increase gun damage

3. I would set back the gamestages a bit, cops and ferals on day 14 is too much, day 21 would be better imho

4. I would decrease the amount of meat required to make food a little, maybe to 2 or 3 perhaps

5. And I definitely would remove the buffs the zombies have against blocks, or at least lower them because the new AI makes these buffs OP - in A16 with steel pillars I still had to actively defend my base. The AI is amazing imo, but with the increased damage they do against a single block it's too much. This will also make wood huts better on the first few nights.

6. Add a perk to decrease stamina drain when using heavy armor

7. Add a stealth lock picking perk - there's a modlet for this which is really good, it should be part of the main game.

Also I want the performance to improve, the dips especially where it will stutter down to 15fps or something before going back up to normal levels are odd like it's trying to load something I guess.

But mostly as you can see, it's just balancing changes and bugs/performance fixed - that's it really. The game itself is a vast improvement on previous alphas.

Also note I've played this non-stop aside from working since it came out, so have quite a few hours in A17 now.

 

[R0bb0b]

There seems to be a boatload of new threads about A17. To add an alternative, more structured way of collecting feedback, I created this survey:
https://goo.gl/forms/Cs66bbZ0dz6klyqB3

(Requires sign in to limit each person to 1 submission.)

I hope the results prove useful to the devs.

I don't like this survey. Some of the questions are unanswerable. For example: "What are your thoughts on the new stamina/health system" - survey options: like, dislike and no opinion. I cannot choose either one of those answers because I like the idea but it needs severe rebalancing. Sorry, I won't answer a survey that will portray my opinion as something that it is not.

 

[mr.devolver]

I don't like this survey. Some of the questions are unanswerable. For example: "What are your thoughts on the new stamina/health system" - survey options: like, dislike and no opinion. I cannot choose either one of those answers because I like the idea but it needs severe rebalancing. Sorry, I won't answer a survey that will portray my opinion as something that it is not.

I admit that questions like "what are your thoughts on this or that" are not exactly worded properly if you can give only simple answers consisting of couple of simple words that don't say much - so how you can describe your thoughts by saying "like" or "dislike"? Things are never either positive or negative and nothing between, so if answering by using those simple options available isn't enough, I simply choose the option that says "no opinion", the rest of my answers reflect my most dominant feelings about the topics in question.

 

[Laz Man]

The problem is that for a survey to actually show the opinion of players, it need to be taken by a large cross-section of players - not just a self-selecting subset (players who post on the forum and have strong opinions).
Short of spamming out the survey link with the game (on the main menu or something), that's very hard to do.

Any survey just posted here (or even posted here and on the Steam discussion) is going to give results that are skewed to the point of uselessness.

I've seen other games have a pop up pointing to a survey for feedback. Maybe the dev's can add something like this.

 

[enragedcamel]

I don't like this survey. Some of the questions are unanswerable. For example: "What are your thoughts on the new stamina/health system" - survey options: like, dislike and no opinion. I cannot choose either one of those answers because I like the idea but it needs severe rebalancing. Sorry, I won't answer a survey that will portray my opinion as something that it is not.

That's fine, no one is forcing you to answer it.

 

[enragedcamel]

I don't think you can or should lump zombie AI and block damage into a single question. I love one and hate the other. Just saying.

Yeah, you're right. I meant to get people's general feelings on the increased difficulty of building and defending bases. I should have split the question into two though: for example, I like the improved AI, but dislike the increased zombie block damage.

 

[Venemox]

Well, it's a nice way for us forum users to see momentary opinion about it. My group of 4 co-op friends had only time to play through two horde night (both day 7) till now. Not enough to really know anything.
I won't log into google from this browser, will not vote, sorry. But I'm interested in the results :rapture:

The experimental is out for 2 weeks and has only one hasty bug fix pass applied, some balancing fixes are supposedly in the pipeline but not released yet. Roland said (I think even to you in another thread) that it is too early to make informed judgements. And at least in my case he is totally right, I definitely need more time to make up my mind, especially about the tower defense part. I have 2 new ideas at the moment that I first have to test out and I haven't even reached day 14, neither in the coop game nor in the SP game I started yesterday.

I'd like to point out that Steam's refund policy is 14 days with less than 2 hours of play time. Sometimes it doesn't take very long to make a sound decision. Without any specifics, both my fiancé and I agree ttah A16 was simply more fun than what we've seen so far in A17. At the end of the day, that's what really matters. Now, we are excited to see what happens with the a17 stable release, we understand this is a work in progress. Even more so with experimental builds than the half decade of early access (5 years next month).

Edit: Enough typos to be embaressing!

 

[Czon95]

Hello Survivors,

7 Day to Die IS LIFE. With that being said. I love a challenge. The new update brings that. And just like when I was in ps4 when 16 dropped (definitely not the 16 from PC) but it took me a bit to find my flow. I am considered the builder/crafter/scouter of my group. I love building "partially" epic underground builds (partially bcuz "squirrel mode" kicks in for me and I lose track and never fully complete a build)

With this new update I could build underground bases however the zombies now dig, so I've decided to take over a mansion. My first 7 day goal has always been dig hole to bedrock, build forge, place workbench. New update makes it so that's not an option and unless I'm level 20 prior to day 7 I won't have a forge. I like to stay home and build while my team hunts, scavenges, etc. With new update its more beneficial to stay with the team to level faster than be alone. Oh and safer(Noise attracts zombies, and zombies are smarter. They will hunt you and find you) I have to really work on my aim with killing zombies (which sucks bcuz I'm a crappy shooter) Traders are cool bcuz aside of buying items, you can get/do quests. Which is awesomely good bcuz you rake in the exp and get rewards. If your with a group you get shared exp.

I like the "party" option. For cautious players who want to team with others but don't want to ally them (ally allows access to your base and stuff) You can party members, do quests or scavenge together and still feel safe.

Only thing (as of now, still have a lot to experience) I don't care too much for is the 1 landclaim only. Now when you lay a claim, if you place another it voids out the one prior. So no more multiclaims in a base. No more Multi-bases. However if your allied with someone they can make a base (lay claim) and you'll still have more than one base.

I'm truly enjoying this new update and it really takes me out of my comfort zone. I did horde night alone, died a bunch, but I made it. Being as I am one who hates change, I don't read up on things ahead of time so my first experience with the game was playing with the testers (Thanks again guys and gyrls). I heard a few things but that's it. Even now I don't read up (I don't want the spoilers) I know a few are having issues with this update but if you play it with an open love for the game, know that it's still in experimental so things will happen or not happen. But if you're like me who loves this game you will find enjoyment still. Happy building and scary hunting! Much love -Czon95-

 

[enragedcamel]

Hello Survivors,
7 Day to Die IS LIFE. With that being said. I love a challenge. The new update brings that. And just like when I was in ps4 when 16 dropped (definitely not the 16 from PC) but it took me a bit to find my flow. I am considered the builder/crafter/scouter of my group. I love building "partially" epic underground builds (partially bcuz "squirrel mode" kicks in for me and I lose track and never fully complete a build)

With this new update I could build underground bases however the zombies now dig, so I've decided to take over a mansion. My first 7 day goal has always been dig hole to bedrock, build forge, place workbench. New update makes it so that's not an option and unless I'm level 20 prior to day 7 I won't have a forge. I like to stay home and build while my team hunts, scavenges, etc. With new update its more beneficial to stay with the team to level faster than be alone. Oh and safer(Noise attracts zombies, and zombies are smarter. They will hunt you and find you) I have to really work on my aim with killing zombies (which sucks bcuz I'm a crappy shooter) Traders are cool bcuz aside of buying items, you can get/do quests. Which is awesomely good bcuz you rake in the exp and get rewards. If your with a group you get shared exp.

I like the "party" option. For cautious players who want to team with others but don't want to ally them (ally allows access to your base and stuff) You can party members, do quests or scavenge together and still feel safe.

Only thing (as of now, still have a lot to experience) I don't care too much for is the 1 landclaim only. Now when you lay a claim, if you place another it voids out the one prior. So no more multiclaims in a base. No more Multi-bases. However if your allied with someone they can make a base (lay claim) and you'll still have more than one base.

I'm truly enjoying this new update and it really takes me out of my comfort zone. I did horde night alone, died a bunch, but I made it. Being as I am one who hates change, I don't read up on things ahead of time so my first experience with the game was playing with the testers (Thanks again guys and gyrls). I heard a few things but that's it. Even now I don't read up (I don't want the spoilers) I know a few are having issues with this update but if you play it with an open love for the game, know that it's still in experimental so things will happen or not happen. But if you're like me who loves this game you will find enjoyment still. Happy building and scary hunting! Much love -Czon95-

Very interesting. But this is a thread about a multiple choice question survey.

 

[Roland]

Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think. If they don't want to know - then they are just like every other developer *cough Bethesda*. If they didn't realize that they should ask these kinds of questions right now, then they need to get their act together as a company!
Cudos enragedcamel, good survey!

Oh brother...With you it's always worst possible motives...

There is another update coming....possibly tomorrow or Tuesday. We plan to run some polls after that update. The developers came on and read the forums, their facebook comments, the steam forums and felt that a lot of the negative comments were knee-jerk reactions to change that are seen every alpha update. They did take note of all the most mentioned objections and have made some easy mild changes towards moderation where some changes were seen as too extreme.

In other words, they didn't need a poll to figure out all the first impression criticisms. After the update and towards the second week of experimental we will put up some polls to see where people have settled. I have read plenty of posts by people deciding that things they hated at first they actually appreciate now that they've put some time in. Those who truly hate certain aspects and haven't changed will be able to vote as they always would have.

Experimental is at least another 3 weeks and the devs are likely to shift things one direction and then back another as they...you know...experiment with different balances. What we will really need is more calm expressions of feedback whether positive or negative and when an update pushes something one direction not a whole bunch of screaming "TFP CAVED!!!!!" or "THE RABID MINORITY FANBOI'S WIN AGAIN!!!!!" That stuff isn't helpful.

But in the end, TFP is going to choose the settings for vanilla that they prefer.

 

[Captivating]

I disagree Tea.Your hypothesis would mean that those with stronger opinions (pro or contra) are mostly on the forums.

But if that were true (most ppl just dislike using forums) then the ones in the middle are not going to give their opinions anyways.

So how do you suppose we "test" what the median is?

And even if you do, don't you think most ppl in the forums have taken the most time evaluating the game?

I know 7 ppl who have never been to the forums, most of them think the game is fine, no matter what TFPs change. Because they just want to play casual.

So if they are fine either way, we might as well try to find the best path for those who DO care.

I agree with you. I'm very active on the forums though I haven't ever posted until today. I didn't even have an account until a couple of days ago. I'm incredibly opinionated but most of the time someone has usually already said what I would have. Then there's the whole "flaming" issue. I can't even begin to count how many times someone voices an opinion, especially recently, and they're outright ridiculed for it. There might be some constructive criticism but usually it's just multiple people bashing the OP. Why would anyone other than a troll voluntarily subject themselves to that kind of treatment?

Personally, I wouldn't go to a 3rd party site, create an additional account and log in to vote. I would use my existing account to vote here on the forums though. Adding another anonymous statistic doesn't single me out for people to bash when all I want is for my opinion to weigh into the results.

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Can we get more ppl to take the survey?

 

[Skeeter63082]

Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think. If they don't want to know - then they are just like every other developer *cough Bethesda*. If they didn't realize that they should ask these kinds of questions right now, then they need to get their act together as a company!
Cudos enragedcamel, good survey!

Trust me, they're watching the forums. Roland has already been lurking pretty overtly (contradiction, I know) in many threads. Any good forum mod worth their salt knows how to read the landscape. It's just like user reviews except game forums tend to be more savage. Here, most forum mods know that if you get 75% critical/negative and 25% praise, that's about par for the course, regardless of how good the game is. The simple fact is that people are more likely to complain when dissatisfied than praise when satisfied. The world's always been like that. Good mods and devs know how to dig through forums and get a pretty accurate feel of where the community actually is on something. What they do with that information is what separates the good and bad game companies.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

But in the end, TFP is going to choose the settings for vanilla that they prefer.

Forgetting about the genremix making this even more of an FPS?

Wasn´t it madmole who said, that zombies are just an obstacle and not the goal? Doesn´t feel like it right now with nearly no XP for non fighting tasks.

Only survey worth it, would be ingame. Look at the polls in this forum and than take a look at how many people play at once. Assume it´s at least twice at much overall because not everyone plays at the same time, and see that the forum is not even one percent. Polls on here will only get them confirmation, as forums always tend to be visited regulary by people who mostly agree with the devs. (That´s not just in 7D but in pretty much every offical forum of any game)

For the knee jerk i only have to say: what? xxx u too.

 

[Rockspider]

Oh brother...With you it's always worst possible motives...
There is another update coming....possibly tomorrow or Tuesday. We plan to run some polls after that update. The developers came on and read the forums, their facebook comments, the steam forums and felt that a lot of the negative comments were knee-jerk reactions to change that are seen every alpha update. They did take note of all the most mentioned objections and have made some easy mild changes towards moderation where some changes were seen as too extreme.

In other words, they didn't need a poll to figure out all the first impression criticisms. After the update and towards the second week of experimental we will put up some polls to see where people have settled. I have read plenty of posts by people deciding that things they hated at first they actually appreciate now that they've put some time in. Those who truly hate certain aspects and haven't changed will be able to vote as they always would have.

Experimental is at least another 3 weeks and the devs are likely to shift things one direction and then back another as they...you know...experiment with different balances. What we will really need is more calm expressions of feedback whether positive or negative and when an update pushes something one direction not a whole bunch of screaming "TFP CAVED!!!!!" or "THE RABID MINORITY FANBOI'S WIN AGAIN!!!!!" That stuff isn't helpful.

But in the end, TFP is going to choose the settings for vanilla that they prefer.

That is really good news. I can not wait

After a year and a half of waiting for anything new from tfps! I believe we were so pumped about a17 it just came as a bit of a shock to me the changes that had been made! None of us think it is all bad either I believe just certain elements that kill the fun. Hopefully tfps can find the balance

 

[Skeeter63082]

Oh brother...With you it's always worst possible motives...
There is another update coming....possibly tomorrow or Tuesday. We plan to run some polls after that update. The developers came on and read the forums, their facebook comments, the steam forums and felt that a lot of the negative comments were knee-jerk reactions to change that are seen every alpha update. They did take note of all the most mentioned objections and have made some easy mild changes towards moderation where some changes were seen as too extreme.

In other words, they didn't need a poll to figure out all the first impression criticisms. After the update and towards the second week of experimental we will put up some polls to see where people have settled. I have read plenty of posts by people deciding that things they hated at first they actually appreciate now that they've put some time in. Those who truly hate certain aspects and haven't changed will be able to vote as they always would have.

Experimental is at least another 3 weeks and the devs are likely to shift things one direction and then back another as they...you know...experiment with different balances. What we will really need is more calm expressions of feedback whether positive or negative and when an update pushes something one direction not a whole bunch of screaming "TFP CAVED!!!!!" or "THE RABID MINORITY FANBOI'S WIN AGAIN!!!!!" That stuff isn't helpful.

But in the end, TFP is going to choose the settings for vanilla that they prefer.

As usual, spot on! I think a lot of people forget that they can still revert back to A16 until stable is released, while the rest of us can play "Find the bug" and you guys play "Squash the bug" which is kind of like whack-a-mole except louder because of Joel's keyboard.

 

[Kalarro]

What are your thoughts on upgraded zombie AI and block damage?

Why would you group those 2 things??

Better AI is always better. Defenses that dont exploit the AI beeing almost useless is not

 

[IgnyteZero]

The developers came on and read the forums, their facebook comments, the steam forums and felt that a lot of the negative comments were knee-jerk reactions to change that are seen every alpha update. [...] I have read plenty of posts by people deciding that things they hated at first they actually appreciate now that they've put some time in.

These seem like highly biased observations. I doubt highly that people who have protested against the extreme block damage now suddenly like it. But by "every alpha update" maybe you and they mean like with the weather system or bears? That TFP decided they were so in love with their new content they overdid it? Not a very humble way to phrase it in that case.

Anyway, such a quick update incoming is good news and your feedback is great.